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Aziz Art Nov2019

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<strong>Aziz</strong><strong>Art</strong><br />

Andy warhol<br />

Michelangelo<br />

BAQER AL-SHAIKH<br />

<strong>Nov2019</strong>


1-Andy Warhol<br />

6-BAQER AL-SHAIKH<br />

7-Michelangelo<br />

Director: <strong>Aziz</strong> Anzabi<br />

Editor : Nafiseh Yaghoubi<br />

Translator : Asra Yaghoubi<br />

Research: Zohreh Nazari<br />

Iranian art department:<br />

Mohadese Yaghoubi<br />

http://www.aziz-anzabi.com


Andy Warhol<br />

August 6, 1928 – February 22,<br />

1987<br />

was an American artist who was a<br />

leading figure in the visual art<br />

movement known as pop art. His<br />

works explore the relationship<br />

between artistic expression,<br />

celebrity culture<br />

and advertisement that flourished<br />

by the 1960s.<br />

After a successful career as a<br />

commercial illustrator, Warhol<br />

became a renowned and<br />

sometimes controversial artist. The<br />

Andy Warhol Museum in his native<br />

city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds<br />

an extensive permanent collection<br />

of art and archives. It is the largest<br />

museum in the United States<br />

dedicated to a single artist.<br />

Warhol's art used many types of<br />

media, including hand drawing,<br />

painting, printmaking, photography,<br />

silk screening, sculpture, film, and<br />

music. He was also a pioneer in<br />

computer-generated art using<br />

Amiga computers that were<br />

introduced in 1984, two years<br />

before his death. He founded<br />

Interview Magazine and was the<br />

author of numerous books,<br />

including The Philosophy of Andy<br />

Warhol and Popism: The Warhol<br />

Sixties.<br />

He managed and produced the<br />

Velvet Underground, a rock band<br />

which had a strong influence on the<br />

evolution of punk rock music. He is<br />

also notable as a gay man who lived<br />

openly as such before the gay<br />

liberation movement. His studio,<br />

The Factory, was a famous<br />

gathering place that brought<br />

together distinguished intellectuals,<br />

drag queens, playwrights,<br />

Bohemian street people,<br />

Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy<br />

patrons.<br />

1


Warhol has been the subject of<br />

numerous retrospective<br />

exhibitions, books, and feature<br />

and documentary films.<br />

He coined the widely used<br />

expression "15 minutes of fame".<br />

Many of his creations are very<br />

collectible and highly valuable.<br />

The highest price ever paid for a<br />

Warhol painting is US$105 million<br />

for a 1963 canvas titled "Silver Car<br />

Crash (Double Disaster)". A 2009<br />

article in The Economist described<br />

Warhol as the "bellwether of the<br />

art market". Warhol's works<br />

include some of the most<br />

expensive paintings ever sold.<br />

Early life<br />

Andy Warhol (originally Andrew<br />

Warhola, Jr.) was born<br />

on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh,<br />

Pennsylvania. He was the fourth<br />

child of Ondrej Warhola<br />

(Americanized as Andrew Warhola,<br />

Sr., 1889–1942) and Julia (née<br />

Zavacká, 1892–1972),whose first<br />

child was born in their homeland<br />

and died before their move to the<br />

U.S.<br />

Andy had two older brothers, Paul<br />

(June 26, 1922 – January 30, 2014)<br />

and John Warhola (May 31, 1925 –<br />

December 24, 2010).<br />

His parents were working-class<br />

Lemko emigrants from Mikó (now<br />

called Miková), located in today's<br />

northeastern Slovakia, part of the<br />

former Austro-Hungarian Empire.<br />

Warhol's father immigrated to the<br />

United States in 1914, and his<br />

mother joined him in 1921, after<br />

the death of Warhol's<br />

grandparents.<br />

Warhol's father worked in a coal<br />

mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen<br />

Street and later at 3252 Dawson<br />

Street in the Oakland<br />

neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The<br />

family was Byzantine Catholic and<br />

attended St. John Chrysostom<br />

Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy<br />

Warhol had two older brothers—<br />

Pavol (Paul), the oldest, was born<br />

before the family emigrated; Ján<br />

was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son,<br />

James Warhola, became a<br />

successful children's book<br />

illustrator. About 1939, he started<br />

to collect autographed cards of film<br />

stars.


In third grade, Warhol had<br />

Sydenham's chorea (also known<br />

as St. Vitus' Dance), the nervous<br />

system disease that causes<br />

involuntary movements of the<br />

extremities, which is believed<br />

to be a complication of scarlet<br />

fever which causes skin<br />

pigmentation blotchiness. He<br />

became a hypochondriac,<br />

developing a fear of hospitals and<br />

doctors. Often bedridden as a<br />

child, he became an outcast at<br />

school and bonded with<br />

his mother.<br />

At times when he was confined to<br />

bed, he drew, listened to the radio<br />

and collected pictures of movie<br />

stars around his bed. Warhol later<br />

described this period as very<br />

important in the development of<br />

his personality, skill-set and<br />

preferences. When Warhol was 13,<br />

his father died in an accident.<br />

As a teenager, Warhol graduated<br />

from Schenley High School in 1945.<br />

After graduating from high school,<br />

his intentions were to study art<br />

education at the University of<br />

Pittsburgh in the hope of becoming<br />

an art teacher, but his plans<br />

changed and he enrolled in the<br />

Carnegie Institute of Technology in<br />

Pittsburgh, where he studied<br />

commercial art. During his time<br />

there, Warhol joined the campus<br />

Modern Dance Club and Beaux <strong>Art</strong>s<br />

Society. He also served as art<br />

director of the student art<br />

magazine, Cano, illustrating a cover<br />

in 1948 and a full-page interior<br />

illustration in 1949.These are<br />

believed to be his first two<br />

published artworks. Warhol earned<br />

a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in pictorial<br />

design in 1949. Later that year, he<br />

moved to New York City and began<br />

a career in magazine illustration<br />

and advertising.


Death<br />

Warhol died in Manhattan at 6:32<br />

am on February 22, 1987.<br />

According to news reports, he had<br />

been making good recovery from a<br />

routine gallbladder surgery at New<br />

York Hospital before dying in his<br />

sleep from a sudden<br />

post-operative cardiac arrhythmia.<br />

Prior to his diagnosis and<br />

operation, Warhol delayed having<br />

his recurring gallbladder problems<br />

checked, as he was afraid to enter<br />

hospitals<br />

and see doctors. His family sued<br />

the hospital for inadequate care,<br />

saying that the arrhythmia was<br />

caused by improper care and water<br />

intoxication. The malpractice case<br />

was quickly settled out of court;<br />

Warhol's family received an<br />

undisclosed sum of money.<br />

Warhol's body was taken back to<br />

Pittsburgh by his brothers for<br />

burial. The wake was at Thomas P.<br />

Kunsak Funeral Home and was an<br />

open-coffin ceremony. The coffin<br />

was a solid bronze casket with gold<br />

plated rails and white upholstery.<br />

Warhol was dressed in a black<br />

cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a<br />

platinum wig, and sunglasses. He<br />

was posed holding a small prayer<br />

book and a red rose. The funeral<br />

liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost<br />

Byzantine Catholic Church on<br />

Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy<br />

was given by Monsignor Peter Tay.<br />

Yoko Ono and John Richardson<br />

were speakers. The coffin was<br />

covered with white roses and<br />

asparagus ferns. After the liturgy,<br />

the coffin was driven to St. John the<br />

Baptist Byzantine Catholic<br />

Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south<br />

suburb of Pittsburgh.<br />

At the grave, the priest said a brief<br />

prayer and sprinkled holy water on<br />

the casket. Before the coffin was<br />

lowered, Paige Powell dropped a<br />

copy of Interview magazine, an<br />

Interview T-shirt, and a bottle of<br />

the Estee Lauder perfume<br />

"Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol<br />

was buried next to his mother and<br />

father. A memorial service was held<br />

in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1,<br />

1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral,<br />

New York


BAQER AL-SHAIKH<br />

Baqer’s highly-textured paintings<br />

mostly manifest themselves in the<br />

sphere of nudes. A sense of<br />

mystique is constant across his<br />

pieces. This mystique is heightened<br />

by an ubiquitous somberness that<br />

transcends past light and dark<br />

brushstrokes. Very seldom is a face<br />

seen in his work. The figures almost<br />

blend into their backgrounds,<br />

blurring the lines between the<br />

corporal and metaphysical states of<br />

darkness.<br />

Baqer Al-Shaikh hails from<br />

Baghdad, Iraq. He currently resides<br />

in Amman, Jordan. Baqer holds a<br />

Diploma in Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from the Fine<br />

<strong>Art</strong>s Institute of Baghdad. He is a<br />

member of several artist<br />

associations. He is also the<br />

recipient of several awards,<br />

including the Al-Wasti Festival of<br />

Baghdad Award, and the 2008<br />

Ashtar Festival Award of the Iraqi<br />

<strong>Art</strong>ists Association. He also holds<br />

nominations from global art sites,<br />

and numerous honorary awards.<br />

Baqer has exhibited his works<br />

through group exhibitions in<br />

Lebanon, Iraq & Saudi Arabia, as<br />

well as solo exhibitions in Jordan &<br />

Lebanon.<br />

6


Michelangelo di Lodovico<br />

Buonarroti Simoni<br />

(6 March 1475 – 18 February<br />

1564), commonly known as<br />

Michelangelo , was an Italian<br />

sculptor, painter, architect, poet,<br />

and engineer of the High<br />

Renaissance who exerted an<br />

unparalleled influence on the<br />

development of Western art.<br />

Considered as the greatest living<br />

artist in his lifetime, he has since<br />

been held as one of the greatest<br />

artists of all time.Despite making<br />

few forays beyond the arts, his<br />

versatility in the disciplines he<br />

took up was of such a high order<br />

that he is often considered a<br />

contender for the title of the<br />

archetypal Renaissance man,<br />

along with his fellow Italian<br />

Leonardo da Vinci.<br />

A number of his works in painting,<br />

sculpture, and architecture rank<br />

among the most famous in<br />

existence. His output in every field<br />

during his long life was prodigious;<br />

when the sheer volume of<br />

correspondence, sketches, and<br />

reminiscences that survive is also<br />

taken into account, he is the bestdocumented<br />

artist of the 16th<br />

century.<br />

Two of his best-known works, the<br />

Pietà and David, were sculpted<br />

before he turned thirty. Despite his<br />

low opinion of painting,<br />

Michelangelo also created two of<br />

the most influential works in fresco<br />

in the history of Western art: the<br />

scenes from Genesis on the ceiling<br />

and The Last Judgment on the altar<br />

wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.<br />

As an architect, Michelangelo<br />

pioneered the Mannerist style at<br />

the Laurentian Library. At the age of<br />

74 he succeeded Antonio da<br />

Sangallo the Younger as the<br />

architect of St. Peter's Basilica.<br />

Michelangelo transformed the plan,<br />

the western end being finished to<br />

Michelangelo's design, the dome<br />

being completed after his death<br />

with some modification. 7


In a demonstration of<br />

Michelangelo's unique standing,<br />

he was the first Western artist<br />

whose biography was published<br />

while he was alive.<br />

Two biographies were published<br />

of him during his lifetime; one of<br />

them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed<br />

that he was the pinnacle of all<br />

artistic achievement since the<br />

beginning of the Renaissance, a<br />

viewpoint that continued to have<br />

currency in art history for<br />

centuries.<br />

In his lifetime he was also often<br />

called Il Divino ("the divine one").<br />

One of the qualities most admired<br />

by his contemporaries was his<br />

terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring<br />

grandeur, and it was the attempts<br />

of subsequent artists to imitate<br />

Michelangelo's impassioned and<br />

highly personal style that resulted<br />

in Mannerism, the next major<br />

movement in Western art after the<br />

High Renaissance.<br />

Early life, 1475–88<br />

Michelangelo was born<br />

on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near<br />

Arezzo, Tuscany.(Today, Caprese is<br />

known as Caprese Michelangelo).<br />

For several generations, his family<br />

had been small-scale bankers in<br />

Florence, the bank had failed and<br />

his father, Ludovico di Leonardo<br />

Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a<br />

government post in Caprese, where<br />

Michelangelo was born.At the time<br />

of Michelangelo's birth, his father<br />

was the Judicial administrator of the<br />

small town of Caprese and local<br />

administrator of Chiusi.<br />

Michelangelo's mother was<br />

Francesca di Neri del Miniato di<br />

Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to<br />

descend from the Countess<br />

Mathilde of Canossa; this claim<br />

remains unproven, but<br />

Michelangelo himself believed it.<br />

Several months after Michelangelo's<br />

birth, the family returned to<br />

Florence, where Michelangelo was<br />

raised. At later times, during his<br />

mother's prolonged illness and after<br />

her death in 1481, when he was just<br />

six years old, Michelangelo lived<br />

with a stonecutter and his wife and<br />

family in the town of Settignano,<br />

where his father owned a marble<br />

quarry and a small farm.Giorgio<br />

Vasari quotes Michelangelo:


Apprenticeships, 1488–92<br />

As a young boy, Michelangelo was<br />

sent to Florence to study grammar<br />

under the Humanist Francesco da<br />

Urbino.[5][8][b] The young artist,<br />

however, showed no interest in his<br />

schooling, preferring to copy<br />

paintings from churches and seek<br />

the company of painters.<br />

The city of Florence was at that<br />

time the greatest centre of the<br />

arts and learning in Italy. <strong>Art</strong> was<br />

sponsored by the Signoria (the<br />

town council), by the merchant<br />

guilds and by wealthy patrons<br />

such as the Medici and their<br />

banking associates.<br />

The Renaissance, a renewal of<br />

Classical scholarship<br />

and the arts, had its first flowering<br />

in Florence.In the early 1400s, the<br />

architect Brunelleschi had studied<br />

the remains of Classical buildings<br />

in Rome and created two churches,<br />

San Lorenzo's and Santo Spiritu,<br />

years to create the bronze doors of<br />

the Baptistry, which Michelangelo<br />

was to describe as "The Gates of<br />

Paradise". The exterior niches of<br />

the Church of Or' San Michele<br />

contained a gallery of works by the<br />

greatest sculptors of Florence,<br />

Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and<br />

Nanni di Banco.The interiors of the<br />

older churches were covered with<br />

frescos, mostly in the Late Medieval<br />

style, but also in the Early<br />

Renaissance style, begun by Giotto<br />

and continued by Masaccio in the<br />

Brancacci Chapel, both of whose<br />

works Michelangelo studied and<br />

copied in drawings. During<br />

Michelangelo's childhood, a team<br />

of painters had been called from<br />

Florence to the Vatican, in order to<br />

decorate the walls of the Sistine<br />

Chapel. Among them was<br />

Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master of<br />

the technique of fresco painting, of<br />

perspective, figure drawing and<br />

portraiture. He had the largest<br />

workshop in Florence, at that<br />

period.<br />

which embodied the Classical<br />

precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo<br />

Ghiberti had laboured for fifty<br />

In 1488, at thirteen, Michelangelo<br />

was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio..


When he was only fourteen, his<br />

father persuaded Ghirlandaio to<br />

pay his apprentice as an artist,<br />

which was highly unusual at the<br />

time. When in 1489, Lorenzo de'<br />

Medici, de facto ruler of Florence,<br />

asked Ghirlandaio for his two best<br />

pupils, Ghirlandaio sent<br />

Michelangelo and Francesco<br />

Granacci. From 1490 to 1492,<br />

Michelangelo attended the<br />

Humanist academy which the<br />

Medici had founded along Neo<br />

Platonic lines. At the academy,<br />

both Michelangelo's outlook and<br />

his art were subject to the<br />

influence of many of the most<br />

prominent philosophers and<br />

writers of the day including<br />

Marsilio Ficino, Pico della<br />

Mirandola and Poliziano. At this<br />

time, Michelangelo sculpted the<br />

reliefs Madonna of the Steps<br />

(1490–1492) and Battle of the<br />

Centaurs (1491–1492). The latter<br />

was based on a theme suggested<br />

by Poliziano and was<br />

commissioned by Lorenzo de<br />

Medici. Michelangelo worked for a<br />

time with the sculptor Bertoldo di<br />

Giovanni. When he was seventeen,<br />

another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano,<br />

struck him on the nose, causing the<br />

disfigurement which is conspicuous<br />

in all the portraits of Michelangelo<br />

Bologna, Florence and Rome,<br />

1492–99<br />

Michelangelo's Pietà, St Peter's<br />

Basilica (1498–99)<br />

Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8<br />

April 1492 brought a reversal of<br />

Michelangelo's circumstances.<br />

Michelangelo left the security of<br />

the Medici court and returned to<br />

his father's house. In the following<br />

months he carved a polychrome<br />

wooden Crucifix (1493), as a gift to<br />

the prior of the Florentine church<br />

of Santo Spirito, which had allowed<br />

him to do some anatomical studies<br />

of the corpses of the church's<br />

hospital.[21] Between 1493 and<br />

1494 he bought a block of marble,<br />

and carved a larger than life statue<br />

of Hercules, which was sent to<br />

France and subsequently<br />

disappeared sometime circa 18th<br />

century. On 20 January 1494, after<br />

heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir,<br />

Piero de Medici, commissioned a<br />

snow statue, and Michelangelo<br />

again entered the court of the<br />

Medici.


In the same year, the Medici were<br />

expelled from Florence as the result<br />

of the rise of Savonarola.<br />

Michelangelo left the city before<br />

the end of the political upheaval,<br />

moving to Venice and then to<br />

Bologna. In Bologna, he was<br />

commissioned to carve several of<br />

the last small figures for the<br />

completion of the Shrine of St.<br />

Dominic, in the church dedicated to<br />

that saint. At this time<br />

Michelangelo studied the robust<br />

reliefs carved by Jacopo della<br />

Quercia around main portal of the<br />

Basilica of St Petronius, including<br />

the panel of The Creation of Eve<br />

the composition of which was to<br />

reappear on the Sistine Chapel<br />

ceiling. Towards the end of 1494,<br />

the political situation in Florence<br />

was calmer. The city, previously<br />

under threat from the French, was<br />

no longer in danger as Charles VIII<br />

had suffered defeats. Michelangelo<br />

returned to Florence but received<br />

no commissions from the new city<br />

government under Savonarola. He<br />

returned to the employment of the<br />

Medici. During the half year he<br />

spent in Florence, he worked on<br />

two small statues, a child St. John<br />

the Baptist and a sleeping Cupid


According to Condivi, Lorenzo<br />

di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for<br />

whom Michelangelo had sculpted<br />

St. John the Baptist, asked that<br />

Michelangelo "fix it so that it<br />

looked as if it had been buried" so<br />

he could "send it to Rome...pass<br />

an ancient work and … sell<br />

it much better." Both Lorenzo and<br />

Michelangelo were unwittingly<br />

cheated out of the real value of<br />

the piece by a middleman.<br />

Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom<br />

Lorenzo had sold it, discovered<br />

that it was a fraud, but was so<br />

impressed by the quality of the<br />

sculpture that he invited the artist<br />

to Rome. This apparent success in<br />

selling his sculpture abroad as well<br />

as the conservative Florentine<br />

situation may have encouraged<br />

Michelangelo to accept the<br />

prelate's invitation.Michelangelo<br />

arrived in Rome 25 June 1496 at<br />

the age of 21. On 4 July of the<br />

same year, he began work on a<br />

commission for Cardinal Raffaele<br />

Riario, an over-life-size statue of<br />

the Roman wine god Bacchus.<br />

Upon completion, the work was<br />

rejected by the cardinal, and<br />

subsequently entered the<br />

collection of the banker Jacopo<br />

Galli, for his garden.<br />

The Statue of David, completed by<br />

Michelangelo in 1504, is one of the<br />

most renowned works of the<br />

Renaissance.<br />

In November 1497, the French<br />

ambassador to the Holy See,<br />

Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas,<br />

commissioned him to carve a Pietà,<br />

a sculpture showing the Virgin<br />

Mary grieving over the body of<br />

Jesus. The subject, which is not part<br />

of the Biblical narrative of the<br />

Crucifixion, was common in<br />

religious sculpture of Medieval<br />

Northern Europe and would have<br />

been very familiar to the Cardinal.<br />

The contract was agreed upon in<br />

August of the following year.<br />

Michelangelo was 24 at the time of<br />

its completion. It was soon to be<br />

regarded as one of the world's<br />

great masterpieces of sculpture, "a<br />

revelation of all the potentialities<br />

and force of the art of sculpture".<br />

Contemporary opinion was<br />

summarized by Vasari: "It is<br />

certainly a miracle that a formless<br />

block of stone could ever have<br />

been reduced to a perfection that<br />

nature is scarcely able to create in<br />

the flesh.


Florence, 1499–1505<br />

David (Michelangelo)<br />

Michelangelo returned to<br />

Florence in 1499. The republic<br />

was<br />

changing after the fall of anti-<br />

Renaissance Priest and leader of<br />

Florence, Girolamo Savonarola,<br />

(executed in 1498) and the rise of<br />

the gonfaloniere Piero Soderini.<br />

He was asked by the consuls of<br />

the Guild of Wool to complete an<br />

unfinished project begun 40 years<br />

earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a<br />

colossal statue of Carrara marble<br />

portraying David as a symbol of<br />

Florentine freedom, to be placed<br />

on the gable of Florence Cathedral.<br />

Michelangelo responded by<br />

completing his most famous work,<br />

the Statue of David, in 1504. The<br />

masterwork definitively<br />

established his prominence as a<br />

sculptor of extraordinary technical<br />

skill and strength of symbolic<br />

imagination. A team of<br />

consultants, including Botticelli<br />

And Leonardo da Vinci, was called<br />

together to decide upon its<br />

placement, ultimately the Piazza<br />

della Signoria, in front of the<br />

Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in<br />

the Academia while a replica<br />

occupies its place in the square.<br />

With the completion of the David<br />

came another commission. In early<br />

1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been<br />

commissioned in the council<br />

chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio<br />

depicting the Battle of Angiari<br />

between the forces of Florence and<br />

Milan in 1434. Michelangelo was<br />

then commissioned to paint the<br />

Battle of Cascina.<br />

The two paintings are very<br />

different, Leonardo's depicting<br />

soldiers fighting on horseback, and<br />

Michelangelo's showing soldiers<br />

being ambushed as they bathe in<br />

the river. Neither work was<br />

completed and both were lost<br />

when the chamber was<br />

refurbished. Both works were much<br />

admired and copies remain of<br />

them, Leonardo's work having been<br />

copied by Rubens and<br />

Michelangelo's by Bastiano da<br />

Sangallo.<br />

Also during this period,<br />

Michelangelo was commissioned by<br />

Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy<br />

Family" as a present for his wife,<br />

Maddalena Strozzi.


It is known as the Doni Tondo and<br />

hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its<br />

original magnificent frame which<br />

Michelangelo may have<br />

designed.He also may have<br />

painted the Madonna and Child<br />

with John the Baptist, known as the<br />

Manchester Madonna and now in<br />

the National Gallery, London,<br />

United Kingdom.<br />

Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1505–12<br />

Michelangelo painted the ceiling<br />

of the Sistine Chapel; the work<br />

took approximately four years to<br />

complete (1508–12)<br />

In 1505, Michelangelo was invited<br />

back to Rome by the newly<br />

elected Pope Julius II. He was<br />

commissioned to build the Pope's<br />

tomb, which was to include forty<br />

statues and be finished in five<br />

years.<br />

Under the patronage of the Pope,<br />

Michelangelo experienced<br />

constant interruptions to his work<br />

on the tomb in order to accomplish<br />

numerous other tasks. Although<br />

Michelangelo worked on the tomb<br />

for 40 years, it was never finished<br />

to his satisfaction. It is located in<br />

the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in<br />

Rome and is most famous for the<br />

central figure of Moses, completed<br />

in 1516.Of the other statues<br />

intended for the tomb, two known<br />

as the Heroic Captive and the Dying<br />

Captive, are now in the Louvre.<br />

During the same period,<br />

Michelangelo painted the ceiling of<br />

the Sistine Chapel, which took<br />

approximately four years to<br />

complete (1508–1512). According<br />

to Condivi's account, Bramante,<br />

who was working on the building of<br />

St Peter's Basilica, resented<br />

Michelangelo's commission for the<br />

Pope's tomb and convinced the<br />

Pope to commission him in a<br />

medium with which he was<br />

unfamiliar, in order that he might<br />

fail at the task.


Michelangelo was originally<br />

commissioned to paint the Twelve<br />

Apostles on the triangular<br />

pendentives that supported the<br />

ceiling, and cover the central part<br />

of the ceiling with ornament.<br />

Michelangelo persuaded Pope<br />

Julius to give him a free hand and<br />

proposed a different and more<br />

complex scheme, representing the<br />

Creation, the Fall of Man, the<br />

Promise of Salvation through the<br />

prophets, and the genealogy of<br />

Christ. The work is part of a larger<br />

scheme of decoration within the<br />

chapel which represents much of<br />

the doctrine of the<br />

Catholic Church.<br />

The composition stretches over<br />

500 square metres of ceiling, and<br />

contains over 300 figures. At its<br />

centre are nine episodes from the<br />

Book of Genesis, divided into three<br />

groups:<br />

God's Creation of the Earth; God's<br />

Creation of Humankind and their<br />

fall from God's grace; and lastly,<br />

the state of Humanity as<br />

represented by Noah and his<br />

family. On the pendentives<br />

supporting the ceiling are painted<br />

twelve men and women who<br />

prophesied the coming of the<br />

Jesus; seven prophets of Israel and<br />

five Sibyls, prophetic women of the<br />

Classical world.Among the most<br />

famous paintings on the ceiling are<br />

The Creation of Adam, Adam and<br />

Eve in the Garden of Eden, the<br />

Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah and<br />

the Cumaean Sibyl.<br />

Florence under Medici popes<br />

1513 – early 1534<br />

In 1513, Pope Julius II died and was<br />

succeeded by Pope Leo X, the<br />

second son of Lorenzo dei Medici.<br />

Pope Leo commissioned<br />

Michelangelo to reconstruct the<br />

façade of the Basilica of San<br />

Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it<br />

with sculptures. He agreed<br />

reluctantly and spent three years<br />

creating drawings and models for<br />

the façade, as well as attempting to<br />

open a new marble quarry at<br />

Pietrasanta specifically for the<br />

project. In 1520 the work was<br />

abruptly cancelled by his financially<br />

strapped patrons before any real<br />

progress had been made. The<br />

basilica lacks a façade to this day.<br />

In 1520 the Medici came back to<br />

Michelangelo with another grand<br />

proposal, this time for a family<br />

funerary chapel in the Basilica of<br />

San Lorenzo.


Fortunately for posterity, this<br />

project, occupying the artist for<br />

much of the 1520s and 1530s, was<br />

more fully realized. Michelangelo<br />

used his own discretion to create<br />

its composition of the Medici<br />

Chapel. It houses the large tombs<br />

of two of the younger members of<br />

the Medici family, Giuliano,<br />

Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his<br />

nephew, but it also serves to<br />

commemorate their more famous<br />

predecessors, Lorenzo the<br />

Magnificent and his brother<br />

Giuliano who are buried nearby.<br />

The tombs display statues of the<br />

two Medici and allegorical figures<br />

representing Night and Day, and<br />

Dusk and Dawn. The chapel also<br />

contains Michelangelo's Medici<br />

Madonna. In 1976 a concealed<br />

corridor was discovered with<br />

drawings on the walls that related<br />

to the chapel itself.<br />

Pope Leo X died in 1521, to be<br />

succeeded briefly by the austere<br />

Adrian VI, then his cousin Giulio<br />

Medici as Pope Clement VII.<br />

In 1524 Michelangelo received an<br />

architectural commission from the<br />

Medici pope for the Laurentian<br />

Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He<br />

designed both the interior of the<br />

library itself and its vestibule, a<br />

building which utilises architectural<br />

forms with such dynamic effect that<br />

it is seen as the forerunner of<br />

Baroque architecture. It was left to<br />

assistants to interpret his plans and<br />

carry out instruction. The library<br />

was not opened until 1571 and the<br />

vestibule remained incomplete<br />

until 1904.<br />

In 1527, the Florentine citizens,<br />

encouraged by the sack of Rome,<br />

threw out the Medici and restored<br />

the republic. A siege of the city<br />

ensued, and Michelangelo went to<br />

the aid of his beloved Florence by<br />

working on the city's fortifications<br />

from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in<br />

1530 and the Medici were restored<br />

to power. Michelangelo fell out of<br />

favour with the young Alessandro<br />

Medici who had been installed as<br />

the first Duke of Florence, and<br />

fearing for his life, he fled to Rome,<br />

leaving assistants to complete the<br />

Medici chapel and the Laurentian<br />

Library. Despite Michelangelo's<br />

support of the republic and<br />

resistance to the Medici rule, he<br />

was welco


Rome, 1534–46<br />

The Last Judgement (1534–41)<br />

In Rome, Michelangelo lived near<br />

the church of Santa Maria di<br />

Loreto. It was at this time that he<br />

met the poet, Vittoria Colonna,<br />

marchioness of Pescara, who was<br />

to become one of his closest<br />

friends until her death in<br />

1547.Shortly before his death in<br />

1534 Pope Clement VII<br />

commissioned Michelangelo to<br />

paint a fresco of The Last<br />

Judgement on the altar wall of the<br />

Sistine Chapel. His successor,<br />

Paul III was instrumental in seeing<br />

that Michelangelo began and<br />

completed the project.<br />

Michelangelo labored on the<br />

project from 1534 to October<br />

1541.The fresco depicts the<br />

Second Coming of Christ and his<br />

Judgement of the souls.<br />

Michelangelo ignored the usual<br />

artistic conventions<br />

in portraying Jesus, and showed<br />

him a massive, muscular figure,<br />

youthful,<br />

beardless and naked. He is<br />

surrounded by saints, among<br />

which Saint Bartholomew holds a<br />

drooping flayed skin, bearing the<br />

likeness of Michelangelo.<br />

The dead rise from their graves, to<br />

be consigned either to Heaven or to<br />

Hell.Once completed, the depiction<br />

ofChrist and the Virgin Mary naked<br />

was considered sacrilegious, and<br />

Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor<br />

Sernini (Mantua's ambassador)<br />

campaigned to have the fresco<br />

removed or censored, but the Pope<br />

resisted. At the Council of Trent,<br />

shortly before Michelangelo's<br />

death in 1564, it was decided to<br />

obscure the genitals and Daniele da<br />

Volterra, an apprentice of<br />

Michelangelo, was commissioned<br />

to make the alterations.An<br />

uncensored copy of the original, by<br />

Marcello Venusti, is in the<br />

Capodimonte Museum of Naples.<br />

Michelangelo worked on a number<br />

of architectural projects at this<br />

time. They included a design for the<br />

Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid<br />

piazza displaying the ancient<br />

bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius.<br />

He designed the upper floor of the<br />

Palazzo Farnese, and the interior of<br />

the Church of Santa Maria degli<br />

Angeli, in which he transformed the<br />

vaulted interior of an Ancient<br />

Roman bathhouse. Other<br />

architectural works include San


Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza<br />

Chapel (Cappella Sforza) in the<br />

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore<br />

and the Porta Pia.St Peter's Basilica,<br />

1546–64While still working on the<br />

Last Judgement, Michelangelo<br />

received yet another commission<br />

for the Vatican. This was for the<br />

painting<br />

of two large frescos in the<br />

Cappella Paolina depicting<br />

significant events in the lives of<br />

the two most important saints of<br />

Rome, the Conversion of<br />

Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of<br />

Saint Peter. Like the Last<br />

Judgement, these two works are<br />

complex compositions containing a<br />

great number of figures.They were<br />

completed in 1550. In the same<br />

year, Giorgio Vasari published his<br />

Vita, including a biography of<br />

Michelangelo.<br />

In 1546, Michelangelo was<br />

appointed architect of St. Peter's<br />

Basilica, Rome. The process of<br />

replacing the Constantinian<br />

basilica of the 4th century had<br />

been underway for fifty years and<br />

in 1506 foundations had been laid<br />

to the plans of Bramante.<br />

Successive architects had worked<br />

on it, but little progress had been<br />

made. Michelangelo was<br />

persuaded to take over the project.<br />

He returned to the concepts of<br />

Bramante, and developed his ideas<br />

for a centrally planned church,<br />

strengthening the structure both<br />

physically and visually.The dome,<br />

not completed until after his death,<br />

has been called by Banister<br />

Fletcher, "the greatest creation of<br />

the Renaissance".<br />

As construction was progressing on<br />

St Peter's, there was concern that<br />

Michelangelo would pass away<br />

before the dome was finished.<br />

However, once building<br />

commenced on the lower part of<br />

the dome, the supporting ring, the<br />

completion of the design was<br />

inevitable.<br />

On 7 December 2007, a red chalk<br />

sketch for the dome of St Peter's<br />

Basilica, possibly the last made by<br />

Michelangelo before his death, was<br />

discovered in the Vatican archives.<br />

It is extremely rare, since he<br />

destroyed his designs later in life.<br />

The sketch is a partial plan for one<br />

of the radial columns of the cupola<br />

drum of Saint Peter's.


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